Does an Electric car make sense in Zimbabwe?

Probably just from the title quite a handful of you are screaming and yelling NOO! Hold up people let me explain.

Now before I get to the part where it makes sense or not, I just want to give a petrol head's view of things, seeing I'm legitimately a lover of the scent of fuel and rumbling and wheezing engine noises.

So the general thinking is electric cars are uneventful. Uneventful being we have no noise, no gears to shift and they are brutally slow. And with the very early iterations of these cars they also weren't too easy, on the eyes so fair enough.

Aaand also the organs you had to donate to own one further ruined the idea of actually considering getting one

But the BIGGEST worry of electric cars has been how they took up to 12 hours to fully charge only to last at most about 150Km before they cried for another 12 hrs of your life…and power of course.

They just didn't make sense at all even with the incentive that you save a couple extra bucks on carbon tax, unless you only needed it for carrying groceries from your nearest supermarket.

Taking the story home. An electric car buzzing its way on Zimbabwean streets. Does it make sense? YES!…and no.

Yes because

It would totally make sense now, well thanks to Elon Musk and Tesla, because an electric full sized sedan the size of your Mercedes Benz S-Class can now humiliate the most elite supercar in a sprint to the next traffic light.

It can take you from Harare to Bulawayo on a single charge and even do so whilst doing over DOUBLE the speed of the legal limit in Zimbabwe (If roadblocks allow of course!).

It's electric so the space that used to be occupied by the engine and gearbox is now dedicated to an extra boot and extra leg room.

It costs as much as your average Mercedes Benz E-Class (for the bigger Tesla Model S) or as much as your average Toyota Corolla (for the more compact Tesla Model 3)

And fuel you may ask. So for the easiest comparison we take 1 liter of petrol costing about $1.35. The equivalent juice for an electric car is one unit of ZESA which is measured in KWh costing about 9.86 cents.

Oh and if you were wondering, the biggest power bank in a Tesla is a 100KWh unit so just $9.86 to brim the tank and again this takes you from Harare to Bulawayo with some change to get you to Matopos.

Its an electric car and hence the stuff that gets it going is a motor and a battery. Far much less parts than a conventional car and so maintenance costs will be much less.

No because

Filling it up will set you back about an hour (on a Tesla Charging station) or about 5 hours from the socket in your garage. Quite a long recess if you happen to want to take a road trip to the falls.

Also as I mentioned earlier on, The Model S costs as much as your average Mercedes Benz E-Class which, being more realistic, is still something for the elite. Well at least until the Model 3 is open to the public, but even then the US $35k price tag in the US means a total landed cost of $70k, which is still moderately elite.

Would I buy one?

YES! I wouldn't mind getting myself one of these. It totally makes sense in Zimbabwe right now especially if you want a "fuel saver". Come to think of it, an electric car is a true game changer; the performance of the most elite supercars, the range of an average sedan and your fuel costs almost much as bottled water.

It will not make sense NOT to own one. And it would make even less sense NOT to own one in Zimbabwe.

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